An engineering basis for statistical lifetime models with an application to tribology

The authors propose a method for incorporating engineering information about failure mechanisms into a statistical lifetime model. The central idea is that wear, stress, and strain are more directly related to failure than is component age. With an application to tribology, they use the method to derive a lifetime model which explicitly uses information about wear. The model is contrasted with the more common technique of fitting the parameters of a statistical distribution. A primary benefit of an engineering-based model is its interpretability for connecting lifetime data for similar components used under differing operating conditions, such as during accelerated lifetime testing